Alan Summers, Recipient of the Japan Times Award (2002), haibun editor (Blithe Spirit) and co-founder of Call of the Page, a UK provider of literature, education & literacy projects, often based around the Japanese genres.
For events & workshops contact us through our Call of the Page website: Call of the Page.

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Are you interested in a Call of the Page course? We run courses on haiku;tanka; tanka stories/prose; haibun; shahai; and other genres.

Please email Karen or Alan at our joint email address: admin@callofthepage.org
We will let you know more about these courses.

The definite and indefinite article feel as if they are more important in English-language haiku than perhaps in any other genre of writing. Is it solely due to the extreme brevity of this genre? I don’t think so. Haiku can often be a bridge of nuance.

Bridge of Nuance? Okay, you ask, what the heck is that, and I don’t blame you.

The bridge of Nuance is a term I’ve created for this article, and came to me when I looked at how we often undermine our own haiku by leaving out important bits of grammar. A haiku builds up its meaning, or atmosphere or mood, just like any good piece of writing, or film direction will do. From the opening line the poem starts to span a gulf or valley, it lifts words and transports us over that space, just like a bridge is designed to do. And it’s all in how we select our words to give nuance:

“a subtle difference and shade of meaning, expression, or sound.”

It’s as if we arc our words over a chasm, and they can fall if we do not pay attention.

There are so many useful devices to pick from and construct the arcing of words from the first word or words to the last ones. First of all, lets delve into the often overlooked building bricks of haiku such as articles. So what is an article?

“Basically, an article is an adjective. Like adjectives, articles modify nouns.”

So although we sometimes avoid adjectives in general, the humble article can make or break a haiku. Let us begin again…

Paul Lynch, Allen Brizee, and Elizabeth Angeli continue to say that “English has two articles: the and a/an. The is used to refer to specific or particular nouns; a/an is used to modify non-specific or non-particular nouns. We call the the definite article and a/an the indefinite article.”

the = definite article

a/an = indefinite article

Okay, seems simple enough, but why do we leave them out when we should leave them in?

Let’s give a couple of examples of fictional versions:

sunlit brick

the house passes

along a train

Or

sunlit brick

a house passes

along a train

At first glance we could fool ourselves that “Hey! That’ll do.” But the bridge of nuance is skewed or diminished, lacking, or simply not there. Sunlit brick version one has a ho-hum feel to it, doesn’t it? So okay, there’s sunlight on a brick but how does a house pass along a train, and what train? Where is the narrator of the poem (fictional or otherwise)? Version two has two indefinite articles [a] and feels equally mundane, lacking resonance and tension, and that ‘bridge of nuance’ that is so important in haiku. [Note: haiku is not a Proper Noun - if we mean the poem - so it’s lowercase unless it starts a sentence; It’s also singular and plural just like sheep or fish or deer.)

That second sunlit brick poem has two indistinct and unindividualised concrete images. Whose house and which or what train? Any train, even at night? That doesn’t make sense. See where I’m getting? Articles act as identifiers, even if we don’t have the street number for the house, or know it’s the 10.22 am train to London or New York or Zurich, we might need to know it’s “the” train! And that it’s not a house or the house, but each house, as if the sunlit brick is passing from house to house and along the train too! This is both an optical allusion and a poetic device and I was on that train!

With the next haiku, incidentally composed in 5-7-5 syllables, it would blow that pattern out of the water if I added an article to the first line. Note also that when a single line fragment acts as the opening line sometimes we can often dispense with an article: see the revealed original haiku further below.

So, that first version, do we really need to say it’s a night of…? Isn’t night, well, simply night, anyway in fact where it is night? And what is “the night of…” it’s either night or it isn’t, surely? Unless we might mark an anniversary, or the name of a play or movie [The Night at the Museum]?

Let’s get to the middle lines in these versions, and version one simply makes no sense to me. Which or what part becomes a heron, or the heron? Okay we know herons are into night fishing so we are kind of getting there, but ‘the’ starting the middle line is getting in the way isn’t it? And all four versions have three articles ranging from ‘the’ to ‘a’ and it’s all a bit too much for a short poem.

a night of small colourthe part of an underworldbecomes a heron

a night of small colourthe part of an underworldbecomes the heron

the night of small colourparts of an underworldbecome a heron

the night of small colourparts of an underworldbecome the heron

Version four has a good feel if it wasn’t for that pesky definite article [the] starting off the opening line! So let’s move down to the multiple-anthologised actual published version, and all in a 575 pattern too!

The opening line is okay without an article: It feels like a setting and a statement of intention; it doesn’t require further embellishment, it vibrates. Now, for the middle line, that indefinite article [a] is quiet, and also suggesting an indistinct part of the underworld, a darker part of the night maybe, that could be an opening or mouth to the fabled land of the dead. The last line avoids an article altogether. But interestingly enough the indefinite article of “an” originally came from “one” so it’s there, but invisible. So much depends on being invisible doesn’t it, from herons to whitespace.Suggestion and ExerciseIf your haiku is already published, or you are deciding which version might work best, or haven't got that far yet, I suggest you check if you have any articles [a, an, or the].If you don't, what do they look like with one or more?If your haiku does have articles, count the number of them. Do you have two definite articles [the] when a mix of definite [the] and indefinite article [a] might lift the bridge of nuance even better?Test your already published haiku and see if they might benefit from adding, removing, or switching articles. There are always opportunities to further publish your haiku again, be it in an online feature, an anthology, or if you are considering your first or next collection.Play the Articles Game, because it's astonishing how the humble a, an, or the can raise that haiku even further.

Conclusion

Use articles sparingly, and know when they are really needed, and engage with the fluidity of a line, as sometimes neglecting our articles we might sound like an Orc (The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien) or a Dalek (Dr Who) or even Yoda (Star Wars) and it might sound fun for a short time, but it will start to grate. Don’t Exterminate! articles, love them, they are your little friends in the land of haiku.

the handle of the cup holding a coffee with a fern like design in its froth, is like her nose, and both are porcelain.

And when I order something bitter I remember your German, and how you kissed the word Bitte that held the meaning of please, and other meanings.

Berlin afternoon
the rain in your hair

passing time

It all started with a coffee, no hold that thought, we haven’t got there yet. You came over and said your first Bitte, “May I help you?” I started with cappuccino.

The second Bitte was when you brought over the coffee saying “Here you go”.

There were many occasions that asked for Bitte, after all I was working on a novel, I was going to be here for some time. Now I wanted my own Bitte which meant “Can you help me please?” The request was for research purposes, and I have no idea how I ended up in another German city.

is the practice of interspersing prose with haiku, and of course much more. It’s about placement and dispersal within two different genres. It’s the interstice between them, and the intervention and intersections of words, and ultimately our lives as we travel the days and months, as Matsuo Basho opens with, in his classic "Narrow Road to the Deep North”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oku_no_Hosomichi

Haibun is still expanding as a form, and at an exciting point in its development. There's something about haibun, as it somersaults, shifts, hops or glides between poem to prose, that seems to open up another dimension in how we can write and communicate, and taking the journey we can involve our readers with, each mile.

The Passion of Haibun

The early bird rate is still on, and as an extra winter and snow offer, will stay for this course, but it starts next week!

With a slight shift, a momentary aside, a shuffle of cards, legerdemain, the author leaves the main story to dive into side alleys. But how is the ‘real’ narrative still kept when we diverge from the main story? How we do we maintain the momentum, the blood flow?

Blood vessels include arteries, capillaries, and veins which are responsible for transporting blood throughout the body.

Source: Boundless. “Arteries, Veins, and Capillaries.” 26 May. 2016.

The poetry dynamic within haibun is as much about what we think is the main story; but also it’s those nano-stories or even “broken narratives” that haiku can be, hiding on the sidelines, that just require the torch of prose to bring them alive, and equally in turn haiku can light up the prose in other ways perhaps not possible with a straight linear narrative of prose.

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About Me

I'm President of the United Haiku and Tanka Society; a Japan Times award-winning writer; Pushcart Prize nominated poet; also co-founder of Call of the Page which promotes literacy and literature events.